


Coffee Shop Dealings and Rogue Melons

by Princessfbi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Poe Dameron (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Happy Ending, Hurt Poe Dameron, Hurt/Comfort, Investigative Journalist!Poe Dameron, Investigative Journalists, Journalist!Resistance, Kidnapping, M/M, Panic Attacks, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Poe Dameron-centric, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Finn (Star Wars), Psychological Trauma, Service Dogs, Therapy, True Crime Blogger!Rey, True Crime Blogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:42:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23167963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princessfbi/pseuds/Princessfbi
Summary: After top notch investigative journalist, Poe Dameron, becomes the subject of a true crime blog, everything falls apart a little and Finn takes it upon himself to confront the blogger.Investigative Journalism!ResistanceTrue Crime Blogger!ReyService dog!BB-8
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 11
Kudos: 115





	Coffee Shop Dealings and Rogue Melons

Finn found her sitting at a small table in front of her laptop in a sweatshirt that could probably fit three of her. Her long, dark chestnut hair was twisted into a knot on her head while she peered hard at the screen in front of her from behind oversized glasses, and the skin of her thumb jammed in between her teeth. A cup of tea sat forgotten beside her and what looked like the remains of a blueberry muffin was crumbled into bits on a plate next to that. Finn had heard that she could be found surrounded by the chaos of her own self-built office in the corner of the café. It was jarring to see her there, lost in her own world, and he rocked back onto his heels.

He should leave.

But he wouldn’t. He knew that if he did this, then he was balancing on that very thin line of sliding into a soothing resolution or making a catastrophic mistake. So, he found himself in that café, staring at a woman he’d never met, and readying himself to go into battle all the same. He’d never been a confrontational person but he was always willing to make exceptions for people he cared about; no questions asked.

Not that Poe asked. But then again, he’d been too busy with his knees buckling beneath him and staring into nothing as the wheezing strangulation of a panic attack crippled him. BB-8’s deep pressure therapy had been the only thing that had kept him from passing out while Finn watched on, helpless.

It’d been a while since Poe had had an attack that bad. Over a year at least and when Finn had finally been able to touch Poe; been able to hold Poe through the roughness of the remainder of the day; been able to breathe easy when Poe’d finally fallen asleep with BB-8 taking up Finn’s side of the bed; did Finn find out what happened.

But for some reason, all the rage that had swirled in his chest the moment he’d finished reading, dissipated little by little now that he’d come face to face with the source of his anger.

Finn inhaled and tried to find a way to bring his head back on straight. He’d had a plan… sort of… but finding her curled up in a chair with a knee to her chest and the pages of organized chaos stacked around her, knocked Finn off his metaphorical war path.

He should go. Turn around and leave and call in to check on Poe before picking up their favorite pad thai take out and go curl up on the couch to watch a George Clooney movie against the backdrop of a rainy afternoon.

He should go.

But then a pair of hazel eyes looked up at him from behind the beaten up laptop screen and narrowed in suspicion.

“Can I help you or are you going to continue to stare?” She asked, her tone clipped.

Finn felt heat crawl up his neck in embarrassment.

“I…I…” He started and then looked around to make sure no one else was witnessing his stumble from his high horse.

Christ, what was he doing?

Poe wouldn’t want him to do any of this. He’d be pissed actually if he knew what Finn was doing.

She closed the top of her laptop with a gentle guidance than Finn wouldn’t have expected from the dents and cracks but her eyebrow was sharp as it arched high on her forehead.

“I…” Finn began and cleared his throat. “Are you Rey? The true crime blogger?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Me,” Finn said. “I’m Finn. I recognized you from your picture on your website.”

Rey seemed taken aback for a moment. “Oh.”

She ran a hand to push back part of her hair and looked around before back up at Finn. She waved to the seat beside her and shoved some of her papers out of the way with an almost lawless push of her hand by sending one mess into another mess until there was only one big pile of mess on the table.

He should go. But he needed to stay for Poe. He recognized what he was doing was almost entirely for himself now that he was thinking a little clearly but if even the smallest possibility appeared that he could help Poe then he needed to do this. So, Finn dropped into the seat in front of the destroyed muffin

“I read your blog,” he said and a beautiful smile appeared on her face that was a startling contrast to the upfront expression he’d seen earlier.

“I figured,” she said. “Did you like it?”

“No.”

Her smile dropped at his frankness and shattered a little around her like a thin sheet of fragile glass.

“Oh,” she said again.

“I think you’re a very talented writer.” Finn was quick to correct because he wasn’t there to hurt her and Poe would smack him silly if he thought he was being disrespectful to another journalist.

“I just wasn’t a big fan of the subject material,” he added.

Rey studied him for a long couple of heavy silent moments before she sighed and pushed another strand of hair out her face.

“You have a connection to the Dameron case.” It was a question that was said as a statement.

Finn nodded with a small shrug of his shoulders.

“Yes,” he said simply.

Rey clamped a hand over her laptop as if she thought Finn was going to throw it off the table.

“Look,” she said. “I’m sorry if one of your friends was caught up in all of that mess but I’m a true crime writer. I only care about the facts and providing justice for the victims. What little I can at least.”

“It’s the victim that I’m worried about,” Finn said and well, because he was already past the point of no return, he leaned over the table and stared hard at her.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done? What you’ve dragged up for Poe?”

“Poe Dameron read my blog?” She asked, her eyes widening.

Finn frowned. “Really?”

Rey winced and shoved a hand over her face. “Right, right. Sorry. Did I get something wrong? I had legitimate sources---”

“Poe has worked hard over the years to put that whole experience behind him. Really hard.”

“I know,” Rey said, catching on to Finn’s irritation. “That’s why I chose to write about him. He’s an inspiring survivor to all other victims of severe trauma.”

“But he’s still a survivor and he’s still a victim,” Finn countered. “Just because he pretends otherwise, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t struggle with that sometimes.”

Rey stiffened in her seat, her palm flattening out over the top of her laptop, and her teeth latching onto the bottom of her lip. Her sharp gaze dropped down to her piles of--- now that Finn was close enough to see--- copies of police files meticulously anecdote and scribbled on with questions and points.

“Oh my God.” Rey deflated before throwing her glasses off and pushing her hands against her face. “Oh no.”

Finn watched as the fight dissolved from her shoulders as she processed everything at once. She looked up at him, those hazel eyes pleading now.

“I never reach out to families so that I can avoid accidentally releasing any personal information of the victims. I keep it strictly from the case files and media clippings. I never thought---” She threw her face in her hands again. “Oh God. How did he find out?”

“Poe’s one of the top investigative journalists in the country. You don’t think they don’t have a google alert on him?”

Rey grimaced. “He found out through a _google alert?_ Oh, that’s even worse!”

He wanted to hate her. It would’ve been so easy. To throw all his anger onto her while he watched her struggle to process what he was saying. But for some reason… he was starting to like her. Despite everything, her blog had been compassionate about Poe’s state of mind during the whole ordeal, and every detail that’d been made public was correct.  
  
He could feel that she cared, wholly and deeply, about what she wrote.

But that didn’t stop him from remembering the way that BB-8’s licking at Poe’s face brought him around enough to crumple against his orange fur. It didn’t stop him from remembering the way Poe’s voice broke as he called for him mid-sob, terrified that he was alone again.

“I’m going to need you to take it down,” Finn finally said.

Rey blinked at him, her mouth twitching down, before she shook her head.

“I can’t do that.”

Finn would’ve expected the hot anger to flare up into his chest but instead cold ice cut down the length of his spine. He opened his mouth to speak but Rey shook her head again.

“I’m sorry Poe had to find the blog that way but everything I reported was public record. I didn’t sneak into someone’s garbage or hide behind bushes.”

“That doesn’t mean you can use the worst experience of someone’s life for likes and followers,” Finn said a little meaner than he’d intended.

He’d dealt with people like Rey before--- Poe being one of them--- and knew that aggression would only get aggression. People who were headstrong and strong-willed who wouldn’t change their mind no matter how many times you tried to reason with them.

Stubborn people. 

A flash of insult clouded over Rey’s expression.

“Likes and followers?” She repeated. “My readers look to these stories for hope and guidance and maybe a little something that they can grab onto to remind them that they aren’t the only ones in this world who feel targeted and intimidated. Poe is important not because of what he went through but because of how he survived. Look at this.”

She slammed open her laptop and clicked to her browser, pulling up her latest blog post with Poe’s name in big bold letters. Rey scrolled down to the comment section and spun her computer to Finn so he could read.

“I had over a thousand comments after I posted Poe’s story. Almost five thousand by the next morning. And all of them were of people who’d experience something similar to what Poe had experienced some way or another.”

Finn flicked his fingers on the track pad and scanned a few of the comments. Sure, some were from the true crime junkies that speculated on things they had no evidence to support. But most were stories of people detailing their own experiences with stalkers and readers who’d been brutally targeted because of their race or sexuality.

“I don’t do it for _likes_ or _followers,_ ” Rey spat out. “I do it for them. For us.”

Finn glanced up at her and recognized something else similar in her expression. Resilient steel that Poe wore every day after he’d have a flashback or an episode. A grit in his teeth when he would push the dark scared feelings behind him and continue to look up until he felt the sun on his skin again.

It would’ve been so easy to be furious with her. But Finn couldn’t be. Because he knew deep down Poe wasn’t and it was Poe’s story.

But that didn't mean Finn couldn't try to change her mind. 

Finn pushed the laptop back with a steady press of his fingers on the base until Rey took it. The rain outside had gotten harder over time and pattered against the window of the coffee shop. Finn inhaled and grounded himself in the soft scents of coffee and stale newspaper. He’d need to remember to pick Poe up a decaf cinnamon dolce latte before he left.

He remembered the way Poe had crumbled.

He remembered the way Poe had scrubbed his face until he was swollen and puffy.

He remembered seeing Poe in that basement.

Finn exhaled and leveled Rey with a look.

“Okay,” he said eventually. “I’m going to make you a deal.”

Rey closed her laptop and sized Finn up and down with a critical eye, her hand clutching it again. Finn couldn’t help but wonder how many times someone had tried to throw her laptop.

“Take down the blog post,” he said.

Rey opened her mouth but Finn held up a hand.

“Just wait a minute,” he said. “Take down the blog post and I will tell you the whole story from beginning to end. Everything will be off the record but you can write another post with the information I’ve given you. Once Poe agrees, you can post it.”

“I think my blog post was pretty thorough,” Rey countered.

“Your post barely scratched the surface.”

Rey’s mouth snapped shut as she considered him again.

“The post stays until after you finish telling me… and let me take notes,” she said.

Finn sighed. Reporters.

“No recordings.”

Rey nodded. “No recordings.”

“Fine,” he said. “You can take notes but it’s still off the record until Poe agrees.”

Finn wasn’t quite sure if Poe would either love him or hate him after all of this but like Finn realized earlier: he was there now.

“If he says no,” Rey added. “The old post stays.”

It took everything in Finn to agree.

“Deal,” he said and stood up to order his own coffee before settling in.

* * *

When Poe walked into the bodega, he was immediately surrounded by the warm scents of chili pepper and grease covered chorizo that smelled so much like home and made his mouth water as his stomach growled in anticipation. He’d only had time for half a granola bar that day and several bad cups of coffee that kept him focused enough on the piles and piles of doctored logs and mediocre security footage from solitary confinement that had been “anonymously” dropped off.

“Not even an address to send a thank you card,” Karé had said with a light click of her tongue and already arms deep in one of the boxes.

He hadn’t even thought about leaving his office until Leia gave him the boot and threatened to unplug his computer… Which would have been funny if Poe didn’t know that Leia would actually do it.

But the joke was on her because he still had a draft of his article on his laptop. So, win for Poe, he supposed.

Still, it felt nice to stretch his legs as he walked back to his apartment and breathed in the autumn chill that settled in the evening air. Plus, moving reminded him of his need for food.

Manny’s did have the best chicken and chorizo chili and Poe could use the boost before diving back into his article.

“Poe!” Manny said from behind his grill. “Cómo estás, mi joven alborotador?”

“Como siempre, Manny,” Poe said.

He pulled out his headphones, pausing his music, and tucked them into his pockets.

“Usual. Usual. When are you ever going to say _I’m great Manny. Fantastic. Excelente!”_

Poe tsked as he moved past the heavenly smelling grill to the wall of refrigerated glass doors. 

“Believe me,” Poe called over his shoulder. “In my line of work, usual is a good day.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Manny said, waving at him. “I’ll make you your _usual._ ”

Poe snorted but kept his mouth shut because well… Manny’s chili really was that good.

“You know what?” Manny asked even though he wasn’t really asking as the sizzle of the rice hitting the grill sent wafts of onions and green bell peppers into the air. “You won that big shot prize for that article about the…”

“The private aid foundation that withheld vital supplies from victims of a massive tsunami for three years despite calls for it because they just forgot it was there.” Poe added, trying to decide if he wanted the redbull, the apple juice, or maybe just that shot of espresso in a can. “How can someone just forget about twenty thousand cases of unopened diapers?”

He frowned into the freezer. That story had never felt complete but Leia had given him long enough on his deadline and the pressure of his exposure at least got the much-needed aid out to the people until suddenly, it had blown up everywhere. He’d been too busy on his next story to really notice all the hype until Leia had slammed the invitation down on his desk.

“Get your head out of your notebook and find a suit,” she’d said with a roll of her eyes.

“You have children and see how easy it’s to forget about diapers, chamaco,” Manny said with a knowing whimsical air about him. “But my point is, you win this big shot award and you still show up here at all hours of the night, eat my food, and what?”

“Do you want me to not eat your food?” Poe teased as he settled on all three drinks and turned down the aisle with the spicy Cheetos.

“I want you to have a life!”

“I have a life!”

“No,” Manny corrected. “You have a laptop and a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.”

“They’re the chili lime Cheetos!” Poe protested. “And I have a life, Manny.”

“Poe,” Manny said. “You are too young to get away with lying to me. Word counts and hanging out at teachers’ strikes is not a life.”

Poe rolled his eyes and headed to the back for a gallon of milk while he was there. “I think you underestimate how much a public school teacher can drink after a day protesting at city hall.”

Manny scoffed at him and returned his attention to his grill.

Poe sighed, tired and feeling worn out. He wasn’t nearly as young as Manny seemed to think and the world was falling apart around them. Poe couldn’t afford to have a life. Not when so many people were suffering. Big corporations were taking advantage of good, honest people. Neo Nazis were literally marching in the streets. People were dying because they couldn’t afford to pay their rent, food for their kids, and something as simple as their insulin once a month. It’s why he joined the Resistance Publications to begin with. Leia had been a senator’s daughter, having grown up rubbing elbows with the political elite and seeing how corruptions could tempt even the most well intentioned of men. When she started her own newspaper after everywhere else only wanted her opinion on fashion and the occasional social commentary, she’d skyrocketed something everyone dismissed into one of the largest unbiased newspapers of the century. And when paper was dying out, she was the first one to jump on the online platform. Poe may have a Pulitzer after years of struggling to find the right words and doors slamming in his face and people actually throwing things at his car but Leia had three. Leia was a literal legend.

The scent of burnt peppers started to rank out the amazing smells from before.

“Manny,” Poe called. “You burning something?”

The snap back of a shot gun rang as loud of thunder in his ears and Poe froze.

“Drop the drinks,” someone said, his voice reedy and thin from too many cigarettes. Poe turned slowly, lifting his hands in the process, and took in the man pointing a gun at his head.

“If you wanted the last Redbull, you could’ve just asked.” 

He placed his drinks on the top shelf instead because Manny was already getting robbed, he didn’t need Poe to add more to the mess. Poe glanced over and saw Manny in a similar position with his hands in the air and another silent gunman pointing an even bigger gun at him. Suddenly, a hand grabbed the scruff of Poe’s jacket, tugging him down and pulling him back towards the front of the store.

“Get the money out of the till,” Reedy voice said.

Manny’s eyes widened as he swung his gaze over to him and then down to Poe, who was trying to project as much of his calmness to Manny as he could, and then back at the silent gunman aiming at him. Sweat rolled down Manny’s face as his skin flushed into a cold mix of paleness and feverish red. Up close now, Poe could tell Manny was trembling.

“It’s all right, Manny,” Poe said so that Manny would look at him and not the gun. “Todo saldrá bien.”

“Shut up.” Reedy voice demanded but Poe ignored him because he wasn’t about to let Manny panic to the point that he got shot right in front of him.

“Manny, it’s all right,” Poe said. “Just open the till and give them the money.”

The men were in masks and despite the alarming amount of calmness coming from them, there was no reason they would stick around any longer after they got what they wanted. Poe felt the back of his jacket yank up from behind him before his face was slammed down on the counter with a sickening smack of skin against thick plastic and a deep-set ringing in Poe’s ears.

“I told you to shut up. Now give us the money,” Reedy voice said.

The sound of a safety clicked back and then Poe felt the barrel of a gun press, _hard,_ into the back of his head.

Poe heard Manny’s sharp inhalation and the burning from the grill was starting to turn smoky as it filled Poe’s lungs.

“Why don’t you throw in some of that chili for these guys,” Poe said, huffing out a laugh that fogged up the counter from his breath. “This one here seems a little hangry.”

He couldn’t see Manny anymore but he hoped his deflecting would help bring Manny a little back down onto Earth.

The cash register drawer might as well have opened with a bell for how cliché this whole thing was. But the drawer slid open with a steady swish of rollers on metal and the hurried sounds of Manny grabbing the cash was enough for the tension in Poe’s shoulders to ease a little.

“There’s…” Manny stammered out. “There’s more in the safe in the back. I can g-go get it.”

“No thanks,” Reedy voice said and Poe only had a split second to think that was a little odd before he was yanked back onto his feet.

He was expecting a shove or even worse a bullet but what he wasn’t expecting was to feel the drag of his feet as he was pulled backwards towards the exit.

“Wait,” Manny called but Poe was already out of the door before he could protest more.

“Ease up!” Poe hissed from between clenched teeth when he felt his shirt begin to tear from the abuse.

“I said shut up,” Reedy voice said without stopping. “Or I will go back in there and put a bullet in your friend. Now, get on the floor and put your hands on your head.”

Poe was turned until he was facing the open backseat of a small car.

“What?” But Poe was being shoved in the back and the heel of a boot pressed onto the base of his neck before he could get up.

“I said put your hands on your head.”

Poe shifted until he was lifting his hands onto his head and then another boot pressed into the small of his back.

The growl of the engine drowned out the sirens as they sped away.

* * *

Finn waited while Rey scribbled away in her journal but then her eyes narrowed as she looked back up at him.

“You can keep going,” Rey said. “I’m listening.”

Finn sighed and took a sip of coffee, almost wishing for something a little stronger.

* * *

It took Poe about twenty minutes to figure out a few things.

After ten minutes, his breathing had evened out as best it could with his sternum being pressed against the uneven floor bed of the backseat.

After fifteen minutes, he’d done the math and things weren’t adding up. Things like the fact that he wasn’t dead or that the masked jerk that still had his heels on Poe’s fingers and the small of his back hadn’t kicked him out miles ago or the fact that no one had taken his bag from him which held a pretty expensive computer and his phone or the fact that when offered more money they’d passed and left with petty change and… well Poe.

After seventeen minutes, Poe figured out he was in way more trouble than he’d earlier assessed.

He grimaced as his body lurched with another bump.

“You mind watching the potholes?”

The only answer he got was the feeling of a heel pushing harder on his fingers. They must have removed their masks at some point because no one was pulling them over and other than the initial take off, the car didn’t even seem to be going over the speed limit.

Aloofness was a lot more unsettling than people realized.

“So,” Poe said after a while when the smell of cigarette ruined carpet and the repetitive cycling of the back left rear tire started to grow suffocating. “Who do you guys work for?”

He was met again with the silence.

“C’mon,” Poe said, trying to turn his head but only ending up pressing it further into the carpet. “I piss off a lot of people for a living. You got to work for someone. Who is it? Greedo? Bence? Jimmy Fallon?”

“How’d you piss off Jimmy Fallon?” The driver asked.

“Oh my God he speaks!” Poe shrugged as much as he could even though the driver couldn’t see him. “It’s not hard when you call him an asshole which he is.”

“He seems like it. I hate when he sings. I like Kimmel more.”

“Kimmel is so much better!”

“Will you both shut up?” Reedy voice’s foot came away only for him to smack Poe in the head with the butt of his gun before replacing his heel.

Poe hissed into the carpet and hoped that by now someone had put a trace on his phone already. He wasn’t sure if it was the carpet or the throbbing in his cheek from earlier or now the growing bump on his head but he was starting to get dizzy and stressed. He forced a breath in, held it, and exhaled. His fingers were aching and his body really wasn’t thanking him for the abuse and the cramped position on the floor. All he wanted was a long hot shower and for his head to stop pulsing and maybe to stop in and check to make sure Manny was all right. But he couldn’t afford to let his head get caught up with the rest of the adrenaline that was still making his heart pound against his chest. He’d obviously been pulled into something big--- big enough to warrant a staged robbery to cover up his targeted kidnapping---and he didn’t have a single clue to what he was walking into… or driving into… whatever.

Leia had plenty of enemies after her years of strong withstanding journalistic integrity. The mailroom had an entire room dedicated to the hate mail she received and after Leia had let Poe lose in the world, he’d started to collect a similar pile. Smaller but still pretty substantial. But if someone was wanting to get back at Poe for revenge or something, why go to all the trouble? Someone could’ve easily come up and punched him in the street. Hell, the two above him could’ve just beaten the crap out of him and left him in an alley somewhere.

The car lurched to a stop that had Poe rolling into the front seat and Reedy voice let him, the jerk. He groaned as his chest bounced against the middle console but didn’t have time to fully regain his breath before the hand on the back of his jacket returned and yanked him out of the car. The only thing that kept his face from meeting asphalt was a hand on his elbow that dragged him up before his feet could get under him.

“All right, all right!” Poe snapped as he wrenched himself into a stand position.

The night air had turned cool against the sweat on his skin. Poe squinted through the darkness to try and take in some of his surroundings. Any of them. But all he could see was another pair of headlights and a bunch of empty warehouses covering the shadows with more loom and gloom.

It wasn’t until he was dragged into the center of it all that he realized that the shadows were alive. Reedy voice and the driver stopped with Poe in the middle. Someone stepped forward and ripped his bag from over his shoulder, handing his laptop and things to someone else, while someone else dragged off his coat and began searching his pockets. His wrists were pulled forward and wrapped in rounds and rounds of duct tape until his fingers turned cold from lack of circulation.

“Not that I’m knocking a kink, it’s usually polite to ask someone first,” Poe said just to be a pain and he was pretty damn proud by how steady he’d kept his voice.

Once he was secured, he was pushed forward and no one did anything.

Correction: feeling about thirty pairs of eyes on you but not actually being able to see anyone was a lot creepier than the aloofness. Poe suppressed a shiver and turned to the one who had his bag.

“You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

Silence. It hung so thick in the air it almost coated his lungs. The one with is bag seemed to find whatever it was he was looking for because once he did, he’d passed the bag off without another glance.

“Do it but leave his hands.”

* * *

“Then they beat him.” Finn’s stomach rolled as the words came out of his mouth and he swallowed a mouthful of too hot coffee to try and keep himself from throwing up.

Rey’s mouth was pinched as she listened, her hand hidden in the depths of her sweatshirt.

“Doc wasn’t sure what was from the initial beating or injuries later but he had three broken ribs, a fractured eye socket, a dislocated shoulder that had been put back into place incorrectly, a split lip that needed four stitches, and a whole smattering of bruises that they were worried about internal bleeding. Somehow, he didn’t have a concussion.” He could go on but he really didn’t want to.

“Because they needed him,” Rey finally piped up, her voice a little hoarse. “That’s why they said to leave his hands too. They still needed him.”

Finn took another sip of his coffee and swallowed.

* * *

“Lift him up,” the man in charge said with a sneer that curled into his words.

Everything hurt and Poe couldn’t help the small yelp that escaped his lips as someone pulled on his hair and yanked his face up. The flash of a camera blinded what little vision he had left.

The bastards were taking his picture.

Unseeing, Poe gathered up what little moisture he had left mixed with the blood collecting in his mouth and spat. Judging by the noise of disgust, he didn’t miss. A backhand crashed into the side of his face and sent him falling onto the ground where he was met with blissful unconsciousness.

* * *

“What were the pictures for?” Rey asked.

Her eyes were hard and focused as the tip of her pen scraped against her notepad at rapid speed. Finn took a moment to consider. He was starting to get to the parts that weren’t in public records and were locked far away in a police file that Leia had made sure would never see the light of day ever again. Would Poe really want Finn divulging every nitty gritty detail to some true crime blogger that worked alone on public wifi?

Well… truthfully it would depend on the day for Poe.

“It was their leverage,” Finn finally said.

Rey’s pen stilled and she frowned. “Leverage? For what?”

“For Leia,” Finn said with a careful sip of his coffee. “Poe’s boss.”

Rey’s face twisted. “They sent a ransom note to his boss?”

“They sent leverage to his boss.” Finn corrected. “They were proving that they had him, they’d hurt him, and if she tried to shut down the website then they would do even worse.”

* * *

“I’m not writing that,” Poe said for the third time after waking up in a barely lit basement that was even too dank for rats.

A hand grabbed his hair and twisted until his face was shoved hard to the side.

“You don’t get a choice in this matter,” Hux, one of the apparent guys in charge, said evenly despite the flush of anger in his cheeks. “You will write it and you’ll do it quietly and maybe I won’t kill you when we’re done here.”

“I’m not going to write any of your bullshit.” Poe repeated.

What were they going to do? Hit him again? He could take it.

Hux actually snarled at that and yanked Poe’s hair to the roots. “You should feel lucky we’re allowing you to do this at all. We have your computer, we have your passwords. We could just do it without you.”

“So, then why don’t you?”

Poe wasn’t sure what pissed off Hux more; the fact that Poe wasn’t scared of him or the fact that after what he could only guess was close to a day in captivity he still refused to type a single word.

“I’ve been to literal warzones pal,” Poe said, gritting his teeth at the pull of his hair. “You think a pasty red headed wannabe Nazi like you scares me?”

An animal like wail flew through Hux’s lips and he slammed Poe’s face hard into the table and then again and then again.

Black spots cluttered Poe’s vision as white hot pain coursed along the side of his face and down into the cramped muscles of his neck. Everything felt hot as a streak of blood crawled down his scalp and into the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut. Hux threw him down, releasing the grip he had on Poe’s hair and despite all Poe’s talk, the deep ache in all of his muscles was almost enough to pin Poe to the floor. The concrete was cold against his hot skin and reeked of mildew and dampness.

“He’s right,” another voice said, deeper and calmer than Hux. “Why don’t we?”

“What?” Hux snapped out but it didn’t matter because suddenly hands were pulling Poe up and dragging him over to the large opening of a sub-basement.

“Wha---” Poe bit out as vertigo lurched his vision sideways.

“Ren, what are you doing?”

Something about the strained edges of Hux’s voice was enough for the small bit of self-preservation that Poe had left to start panicking.

“You said so yourself, Hux,” the dark voice said from behind Poe.

“Hey---Hey!” Poe cried out as he was forced onto his knees in front of the opening.

He shoved his heel into the ground to stand but someone kicked his leg out and a fist found his solar plex, knocking the wind right out of his lungs.

“We don’t need him.” And then there was a shattering click of a safety coming off. “So, let’s get rid of him.”

“Hey! Wait---wait!”

“Thank you for enlightening us,” the voice said as the barrel of a gun pressed into the back of Poe’s skull.

“Ren!” Hux shouted.

Poe screwed his eyes shut and a frozen chill that he would later learn was the icy grip of unfiltered terror locked every one of his muscles in a vice like restraint. A scream was trapped in his throat and his heart hammered against his ribcage and Leia would never forgive him for dying in a ditch in some abandoned basement and his father would be all alone and it was all Poe’s fault because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut and---

_Snap._

He felt the gun ricochet against his head as the trigger was pulled and the scream that’d been confined in his throat fell out of his mouth with a humiliating whimper. Something even worse and wet ran down his leg.

A boot pushed against his bruised back and he plummeted into the sub-basement onto his front with the shock too consuming to allow him to catch himself.

There was silence above him but his heart was racing too fast to care. Blood rushed into his ears and the voices above him sounded like he was trapped under water. Maybe he was trapped underwater. He certainly couldn’t breathe. He had to be drowning.

“Let’s let him sit in his own piss for a while and see if he’ll be more cooperative later.”

And then the door above him slammed shut casting him into an eternity of starless darkness.

* * *

Finn didn’t realize he was trembling until Rey’s hand covered his fist.

“We don’t have to keep going,” Rey said.

The hard concentrated lines of her face had softened a bit.

“This is why I don’t interview victims and families,” she added. “Sometimes the cliff note version is what people need.”

“Yeah, but what Poe needs is for you to take down the story,” Finn snapped and pulled his hand away.

A flash of hurt drew up a flush of pink to Rey’s cheeks. 

Finn sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose to staunch the oncoming headache. He had to do it. He had to push through. If Rey knew how… if Finn could get her could get her to see… Poe’s story wasn’t some serial true crime anecdote out of an anthropology for armchair criminalists to pick apart. If she could see that, then hopefully, she would take down the post and promise to never write another word about Poe’s experience ever again despite their deal. It was a gamble but it was gamble he was willing to take and his gut was telling him that Rey was a good person. She would do the right thing.

He hoped.

“I’m sorry,” Finn said after a minute to collect himself. “Poe is a lot of things. He’s brave and he’s good and… he’s a lot of things. But you have to understand… they tried to break him.”

“But they didn’t,” Rey said.

Finn sighed and shook his head. “No, but they got close.”

Rey digested that in her own way and after a few moments, she picked up her abandoned pen, and began again.

“So, Hux is Armitage Hux? The one that was---”

Finn nodded.

* * *

“That comma is unnecessary,” Hux said from over Poe’s shoulder.

“It’s an oxford comma.” Poe argued, not stopping in his typing.

“As I said,” Hux pressed as he pushed Poe’s hands away and scrolled back up to the offensive comma. “Unnecessary.”

Poe slammed his hands over the keyboard. “Look, if you force me to delete this comma you might as well kill me now.”

Hux clicked his tongue against his teeth.

“The only thing standing in the way of you and a bullet is me at the moment,” Hux said. “And you want to fight me on a comma?”

“I am physically incapable of writing incorrectly. If you make me delete this comma then I can’t move on.”

“Fine!”

Hux stepped out of Poe’s space with a sharp exhale from his nose but the breathing room is enough for some of the heavy weight on Poe’s chest to lift a little. They were alone that time and Hux seemed high enough on the food chain for Poe to take him seriously when he bragged about being Poe’s saving grace. He was the only one who said a word in edgewise when…

Poe shuddered at the memory and his fingers stuttered against the keyboard, smashing together two words with a bunch of random letters in between.

“So, why are you?” Poe asked when the silence became too stifling and he needed a minute to give his hands rest.

“What?” Hux asked, circling the desk like a mangy tiger.

“Standing in between me and a bullet?”

Hux stopped with a frown. His eyes narrowed on Poe and for a moment Poe worried that he’d pushed a little too far. Hux wasn’t his friend. Hux was as vicious as the others, with a little show of restraint, but he’d still the only thing in front of Poe.

“Despite the nonessential nature of your role here,” Hux said evenly. “You’re… a more proficient writer than most people like you.”

Poe sneered. “I’m touched.”

Hux ignored him and continued his pacing. “It’s also unwise to bring on the repercussions of your… premature disposal.”

The cold rush of adrenaline pooled into Poe’s stomach again but he kept his face neutral. His murder, he meant.

Hux watched Poe’s face with an air of indifference that could only be achieved from years of practice.

“I don’t plan on letting some impulsive pretender with a complex bring down everything we worked for because of the mere inconvenience of your death,” he said.

Hux glared up the stairs leading to the top level that Poe had yet to see before he leveled his gaze on Poe.

“If I deem you sufficient to the level of prestige you claim then…” Hux trailed off while he rounded the table to bend down to Poe’s ear. “I could perhaps arrange for the door to your cell to be conveniently left open.”

Poe inhaled and held his breath until his ribs felt like they were on fire. Men like Hux weren’t anything new to Poe. They were slimy and ass kissers that would sooner throw you in front of an oncoming train than drag you away to safety. Hux had done nothing to earn his trust and his word meant nothing.

But then Poe remembered the way the gun jolted against his head and the laughter he’d heard as the door to the sub-basement slammed shut over his shocked expression. His whole body ached in a way that was so twisted he couldn’t remember what it was like to feel normal. His stomach cramped from hunger. How long had it been since he’d seen a friendly face? Two days? Three? Hours were slipping together and dragging on. And Poe… he didn’t want to die. He wasn’t going to let these bastards have the satisfaction of seeing him break but Poe had to survive somehow and despite the way he played, he knew he had a lousy hand of cards in his favor.

He nodded his head instead of answering and went back to typing the vile manifesto of unscrupulous distain Hux and his men had towards anyone and everyone that weren’t people like them.

Later that night, Hux’s body toppled into Poe’s dungeon with a bullet hole in his forehead and his lifeless eyes stuck staring at Poe all night.

* * *

“Jesus Christ.” Rey let out a sharp whistled exhale from between her teeth.

She’d paled the further Finn told Poe’s story until she had to throw down her pen and take a heavy sip of her tea.

His phone vibrated on the table with an accusatory twitch.

POE DAMERON

The name appeared on the screen like a reprimand just beginning.

* * *

Poe was still trying to come to grips with the fact that there was no getting out of this for him. He wasn’t sure when it became apparent that, that was the case but he couldn’t really doubt anymore that he was coming up on the end of the line. The sky was blue and Poe Dameron was going to die in a filthy, stinking, basement far away from anyone who ever gave two shits about him. Maybe it was after Hux’s body started to go cold, staring up at Poe with a frozen expression of disbelief. Maybe it was after his shoulder dislocated with a sickening pop after he fought so hard to avoid going back into the sub-basement. He’d begged then. Caught up in a whirlwind of sudden panic, he’d begged his guards not to take him back there. Not with Hux’s lifeless body and the suffocating feeling that his death was Poe’s fault.

They’d laughed again when they’d thrown his shoulder back into place and he screamed at the wrongness his joint felt. But they dragged him over to one of the work bench legs and tied his hands behind his back so that was nice, he guessed. Better there than back in the hole with Hux.

How many days had it been? It felt like a week. A week since he’d seen the sun or had a shower or had a full glass of water. The hunger he’d worked past but he was only given meager sips of water to drink and it was almost worse than having nothing.

“Looks like we finally broke ya, huh?” One of them had said, grabbing onto his chin and forcing him to look up at them.

Poe had to bite the inside of his cheek until he could taste blood to keep from saying anything. They laughed again and left him alone and that’d been hours ago.

Poe may have come to accept his fate but like hell was he going to let them break him.

The moon was out. Poe could see the light even through the dirt on the window panes.

Not broken. Not broken. Not broken.

* * *

Finn’s phone jerked to life again. Rey’s eyes twitched down to read the screen.

One Missed Call.

Incoming call:

POE DAMERON

“Do you need to get that?” she asked.

Finn flipped over his phone until the screen was facing down on the table.

“Not quite but I don’t have a lot more time so let’s finish up.”

Rey nodded with a new sense of resolve and shifted her pen.

* * *

He’d seen a lot of things as a police officer. A lot of things! A crying drug lord who lost their cat. Screaming grandmas that were so racist they turned purple. A car literally stuck half way up a fence between two houses. It’s part of why he loved the job. Every shift there was something new.

But a deserted street in the middle of the night with only the moon to illuminate the concrete and the wheezing wind of a cold evening still set his nerves on edge. He’d seen enough horror movies to know that open silence was when a tornado of trouble would find you.

His partner, Rose, thought he was ridiculous. She closed her door with a little more force than necessary and only let the side of her mouth pull up into a smirk when she saw his jump.

“Seems pretty quiet for a noise complaint,” she said as they walked down the side walk.

Most of the houses were abandoned in that part of the neighborhood and residences tended to clump together on one side of the street. Families that had lived in their homes for generations stared back at shadows of neighbor dilapidated houses, falling apart at the seams and crumbling into dust.

“Let’s just check it out and get out of here,” he said.

Any cop will tell you that almost eighty percent of noise complaint calls lead to a lot of looking around in the dark and not a lot of noise to actually complain about. But, they still had to look. It was their duty.

A stupid duty but a duty all the same. 

Rose pulled out her flashlight and pointed her light to a few of the cars parked on the street.

“Well,” she said. “None of the windows are smashed. Must have come from one of those abandoned buildings.”

“Probably some kids messing around,” he said but walked up onto the side walk anyway.

He shivered against the chill that had started to turn vicious in the evening air and regretted a fraction of his teasing when Rose had pulled up to their shift wearing her winter duty jacket.

His flashlight caught something that shined in the too high grass and he veered off in between two old rundown houses while Rose scanned the street.

“Find something?” She asked.

He toed the crumpled aluminum beer can and sighed.

“No,” he said. “Just trash. You sure dispatch said it sounded like windows breaking?”

Rose nodded with a frown. He understood. They could read each other like the back of their hands. He felt it too. It was something he couldn’t quite put his finger on but the sense of wrong was sending every single one of his nerves on fire.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

They spun around to see an old man hobbling across the street.

“Get away from my property!”

Rose met him before he could cross the street, holding her hand out, and pointing her flashlight at him. He had a mean expression that uglied his skin into withered wrinkles.

“Sir,” Rose said. “We’re with the police department. There was a report of windows breaking from one of your neighbors. I---”

“Yeah, I don’t give a shit who you are. Get off my property!”

“Do you own this property, sir?” Rose asked.

She pulled her walkie and called the additional back up code before the man could answer.

“Yes, I do and you’re trespassing,” the man said before pulling out a phone. “And I seriously doubt that the police would hire someone like you. I’m calling the real officers.”

“Sir,” Rose said with a pinched voice. “We are the police---”

He rolled his eyes and turned so that he could finish his quick scan while his partner dealt with an irate neighbor. The faster they could clear everything up, the faster they could get out of there. But even if the man was a seething racist, they still had to do their due diligence. It was more common than you would think. Neighbors, who stayed long after neighborhoods like this died out, would buy up one of the foreclosed properties. In his life, rarely had he seen people who did that actually do anything with the property. It was a lot easier to just own a dwindling piece of land than to actually maintain it. But that didn’t change the fact that the property owners were always mad as hell whenever their skeleton houses were vandalized.

He scanned his flash light further along the edge of the house before landing on the glaring edges of a broken window.

Bingo. 

He bent down and propped his flashlight under his chin. There was his culprit. A jagged piece of rolled up concrete sat in the middle of an abandoned basement. Probably some stupid kids were walking in between the houses and kicked rocks until one was hard enough to shatter the glass.

He signed and swung his light to the left and to the right. No sign of anything else being damaged. The noise probably scared the kids off and given the man’s tirade, he understood why. Even he didn’t want to have to be the one to tell the old man his window was busted.

He turned on his heel and shined his light into the basement window of the adjacent building to make sure there wasn’t any more damage he’d missed and---

He froze.

Even with the blood, he still recognized the dark brown eyes of the missing investigative journalist the whole city had been searching for, for the past ninety-eight hours.

* * *

The phone was almost insistent as it vibrated again and Finn sighed.

“Sorry,” he said. “Let me take this.”

He flipped the phone in his hand and swiped his finger across the screen before holding it up to his ear in one practice flick.

“Hey, I---”

“Oh good,” Poe said from behind Finn. “I’m glad to know your phone still works.”

Finn and Rey stopped. The sounds of the café intensified into a dull roar as the blood rushed up his neck and into his face. Poe snatched the phone from Finn’s fingers and hung up for him before he dropped down into an empty seat with a raised brow.

“Hope you didn’t start without me,” Poe said as BB-8 dutifully dropped down beside him.

No. No, no, no. Poe wasn’t supposed to have found him. He was supposed to be deep in the archives of the local law school library. He wasn’t supposed to find Finn.

Rey wouldn’t have known what to look for when it came to Poe’s tells but they were all there and glaring hard at Finn. The tightness of his body, the strain in his eyes. His shoulders were tense like a wire under what was most definitely Finn’s zip up fleece, his hands hidden mostly in the sleeves and clasped tight together in his lap. Finn was sure if he pulled the material back, Poe’s knuckles would’ve been pressed white. Finn reached out his hand but the knot on Poe’s clenched jaw jumped as he pulled away.

Hell, even BB was glaring at Finn.

“You must be Rey,” Poe said. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Uh,” Rey said, her gaze shooting back between Finn and Poe. “Hi.”

“Has he threatened to arrest you yet?”

Finn swerved his gaze to Poe. “What?”

A small smile crept up on Rey’s face. “No.”

“Good,” Poe said, leaning forward until he could press his arms against the table. “He can’t. He has no grounds plus you’re protected by free speech and a bunch of other complicated laws that I’m sure my boss could pull up.”

Poe cut Finn look.

“Stop telling people that,” Finn muttered.

Something flickered in Poe’s dark eyes and the corner of his lips pulled up in a smirk that was a little too sharp and a little too mean. 

“Are you a cop?” Rey asked with a point of her finger and a grin that was on the edge insane delight.

Her eyes widened and she slammed her hands onto the table.

“Wait,” she said. “Are you _the_ cop?”

“Got that far did you?” Poe leaned back and swiveled into his seat until he was facing Finn.

Poe was acting like his blasé, bravado, pumped self but Finn could still feel the hurt radiating off of him. He reached out his hand again and Poe crossed his arms.

“Poe,” he said, dropping his hand. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But I---”

“I know,” Poe said, his voice clipped. “But you shouldn’t have.”

The circles under Poe’s eyes weren’t as dark as they’d been before and his hair wasn't tangled like he’d been running his fingers through it. But BB-8’s vest was on full display and his face was a breath away from Poe’s leg. Finn could almost feel the thrumming anxiety radiating off of Poe even with the palpable irritation stinging against his skin.

The hurt, though, that was even worse. 

Finn watched as Poe decided something and spun around in his seat until he could lean back, sprawling his legs forward, and just tilting his body a little closer to Finn so that he could feel the press of Finn’s arm on the back of his chair.

It wasn’t forgiveness but it wasn’t an outright rejection either.

“So,” Poe said to Rey who had stayed silent while they had their exposed private moment. “Your article was good. A little biased but since it was biased towards me I’m willing to let it slide. What all are you still looking for?”

Rey startled and a bit of color flushed into her cheeks.

“Oh, I…”

“You missed some of the good parts. Go ahead. Ask me anything!”

Rey’s fingers curled around her pen. “I don’t normally ask the survivors themselves to relive their experiences.”

“Yeah, well, if my story is going to be told, it’s going to be told right.”

* * *

The poor officer standing guard at the door didn’t stand a chance against Jessika Pava.

“Poe!” She called in the small hospital room that felt like an ocean that he was stuck in the middle of. Floating. Barely above water.

Her eyes landed on him in a flash and then her small body was flying across the room before he could even blink. Her arms encircled around his head, her hand dropping to latch onto the tangled greasy curls on his scalp. He hadn’t been allowed to shower yet and he felt disgusting pressed against the clean shirt she was wearing. Dried specks of blood and dirt smeared across the fabric and he could feel the adhesive of the butterfly strips on his forehead starting to peel off. But she smelled like coffee and eucalyptus and her body was so warm and he could feel the way her biceps flexed against his temple as her fingers pushed through his hair.

It was all too much too fast and yet just enough to knock Poe back onto the solid ground of reality. He inhaled and shuddered on the exhale but he forced himself to do it again and again and again. Jess was there. Poe was there. He was out. She was soft and she was just a corner of home but she was home all the same. She let him hide his face against her stomach and into her shirt as the trembling took over control of his whole body.

“You’re okay,” she whispered, seemingly unaware that she was the only thing holding him together now.

The stitches on Poe’s lip were pulling an almost unbearable burn across his whole mouth but he didn’t care. It was the first soft touch he’d felt in hours. It was the first press of comfort after what felt like years. Long enough that he forgot what it felt like.

“You’re okay, Poe,” Jess reiterated.

They had to have stayed like that for hours, ignoring the officers and nurses that were hovering around them and watching as Jess’s protective shielding gave Poe his first coherent reaction he’d had all night since his rescue. The lifeless Poe they pulled from that basement suddenly had a pulse and his heart was doing everything to match the heartbeat pressed against his ear. A sort of desperation yanked at Poe’s throat and he held onto Jess tighter in case she drifted away.

“Leia’s on her way and your dad is getting on a plane.” She must have felt the way Poe’s mouth twitched into a frown. “They weren’t sure if they were going to demand a ransom so they kept him home where he could be reached.”

And if Poe knew his father like he did then he knew Kes Dameron was going to be pissed that they’d been wrong. There would’ve been no ransom. Just his cold body found at some point next to Hux’s.

Poe flinched and Jess curled her arms tighter around him.

“Give us the room,” a familiar voice ordered.

Poe couldn’t remember the last time he heard Zorii sound so… gentle.

He slowly unfused himself from Jess, using the last moment of hiding to scrub a hand over his eyes, before turning to face the detective. Zorii’s curls looked even more manic that usual and the black eyeliner around her eyes were smudged with not a lot of sleep and a hell of a lot of stressful rubbing against her fingers.

“All right, Dameron,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You know what’s coming up next is going to be fucking hard.”

Poe nodded. His head felt like it was a million miles away from the rest of his body and he leaned against Jessika’s hip to ground himself from floating back into the all-consuming numbness from before. He had to face this. If he didn’t then they might as well have won. He would’ve been no better off than being dead in that hole.

“Don’t make it harder by making my job difficult.” Zorii added.

“But making your job difficult is where I get all the fun,” Poe quipped. He hoped it sounded a little more like himself than the comatose zombie that’d drifted out of an ambulance and into a private room.

It didn’t sound like it to his own ears but at least he was trying. Zorii humored him with a smirk.

“Not this time,” she said. “It’s going to be really rough. For the unforeseeable future, you’re going to have a protection detail.”

“What for?” He asked even though he knew.

Her brow lifted, knowing he knew the answer and was making her say it anyway.

“We don’t know how many people were involved with this whole shit show.”

Knowing it in his head and hearing it with his ears were two very different things and the cold grips of panic climbed up Poe’s throat again.

In other words, they didn’t know if someone else was going to try and come after him again.

Jess’s fingers clenched and unclenched in a random sequence of circles along his shoulder blades and Poe forced himself to inhale and exhale again.

It was funny. He couldn’t ever remember a time where he had to consciously remind himself to breathe but now he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it as it slipped from his control.

“Now,” Zorii continued or they’d never make it. “The suspect that tried to stop the officers from finding you, the old dude, Snoke, has a long list of friends that we’re looking into. While my coworkers are looking into that, I’m going to be your point person on this. I pulled a few strings. But that means if you hear anything, see anything, remember anything, no matter how small you’ve got to tell me. So--”

“Do I have to?” Poe blurted out before he could stop himself.

His throat dried until his tongue felt like rubber in his mouth. The idea of being alone again with those memories or the possibilities was almost too much to handle. Suddenly, the probability of his nightmare continuing made him feel more alone than he’d felt trapped in that basement. He was too tired to process fear and too spent to spin his anger so the taunting whip cracks of anxiety took over instead. Suddenly, he wasn’t trembling anymore. Suddenly, he was shaking and _he couldn’t stop._

“I… I mean,” Poe started and then had to force his thoughts to form on his lips. “I just… I mean… Can I… Can I wait till my d-dad gets here?”

The humiliating sting dragged tears into the corners of his eyes. The heat of embarrassment flushed into his cheeks. He didn’t feel like himself anymore. He was just a Poe Dameron imposter. Jess’s arm wrapped around his shoulders again, trying to hold him together like she had before, but it wasn’t working as well anymore. He felt small and so alone and the only person who could keep him from falling to pieces was stuck on a plane too far away to catch him.

He wanted his papa and how pathetic was that?

Something of charitable consideration smoothed the hard edges on Zorii’s face. It was almost weird seeing her like that. Kindness wasn’t something Zorii demonstrated often. She was never cruel but she wasn’t kind either. She crossed the rest of the distance between them and sat on the hospital bed that was too small for three people but somehow, they made it work, and tried on a rather bleak smile. It looked wrong on her. The Zorii Poe knew was full of curse words and smirks and scuffed elbows and it was then he realized why it looked so wrong. The Zorii he knew didn’t pity and yet she was looking at him with it coating her eyes. It felt too thick and syrupy that he almost choked on it.

“Yeah, Poe,” Zorii said, unaware that he was suddenly drowning again. “We can wait for your dad.”

* * *

“The thing about pity is,” Poe said. “It’s like giving a recovering addict a bag of heroin.”

He paused to cover the fact that BB-8’s head had dropped onto his lap. If Rey saw, she didn’t give any indication and Finn was so used to the orange and white boxer being one of the only creatures in the world that could read Poe without him saying a word. Poe’s hand found one of BB-8’s ears and scratched.

“They don’t want it but you give it to them anyway. I mean if you really think about it, it’s one of those things that at the time seems kind and understanding but it’s really just another way for someone to take control. They can’t handle the open wound so they give something so you’ll shut up about the pain because pity is just shame covered in compassion. It’s not for you. Pitying someone is easier than caring for someone. We all know that. Yet, for some reason when we are given this steaming pile of shit of a gift, it’s the softest shit we have ever touched because it’s a gift from someone you care about and they’re telling you that you need it. But it’s still shit.”

And Finn felt like he’d been sucker punched in the stomach.

Something of understanding passed over Rey’s face and she nodded.

“Let’s take a break,” she said. “I’m going to go get more tea.”

Finn barely waited until she was gone.

“Poe,” Finn said but Poe wouldn’t look at him. “Poe.”

Poe dropped his hand into his lap and BB-8 sank to the ground with exasperated huff.

“ _Babe_ ,” Finn pleaded.

He turned his chair so that his legs could bracket Poe’s chair and leaned in. Poe would’ve been the first person to shove him back if he needed space and Finn knew he was pushing. He knew the moment he walked through the café doors that he was pushing. He’d learned to read all of Poe’s nuances and quirks. He could tell what every smile meant, good or bad. He could hear the barely there warble in his voice whenever his convictions were met with an equally strong force. He could see the gears turning in Poe’s head when he stood his ground. He could tell when Poe was mainly being polite from across the room and always caught the spark in his eye moments before he was about to win a fight.

But now?

Finn couldn’t help but wonder if he pushed too far because in that moment Poe was almost unreadable. He took Poe’s hand that was starting to fidget with a loose string on his pants and Poe at least let him.

“You know I don’t pity you. You know it’s not that. I just hate seeing you---”

“Fall apart?” At that Poe finally looked up at him and the hurt and anger and of all things, understanding, were almost too much to face.

He looked better than he had the day before when Finn had walked in on one of the worst panic attacks Poe had, had in years. There was color in his cheeks and his hair coiled in curls along his forehead with a bounce they didn’t have before. In a day or two he would look like his normal self again. His normal self that carried a smile that could light up a room and a confident, cranky humor that demanded following.

But Poe shrugged and his thumb moved in one careful circle over Finn’s knuckles and then again with more feeling.

“I’m going to fall apart sometimes. You have to give me the chance to pull myself back together again,” he said.

And then he leaned against Finn and Finn pressed his forehead against Poe’s temple. Finn breathed in the scents of leather and coffee and peppermint and tea tree oil from his shampoo and felt the tight grip of anxiety that had settled in his stomach start to loosen. There’d have to be a lot of groveling involved later but for now this was enough. 

“I’m sorry,” Finn said, pulling away.

“It’s fine, buddy,” Poe said. “Just… don’t do it again.”

Poe shifted in his seat and lifted an ankle to rest on his thigh when Rey eventually returned. She placed a cup of dark coffee in front of Poe that filled the air with wafts of cinnamon and vanilla.

“How’d you know?” Poe asked with a pleased hum as Rey placed a smaller cup filled with milk beside him.

She shrugged with that same knowing smile she’d given Finn when they’d first met hours earlier.

“It’s a gift.”

She slid into her seat and pushed a steaming warm mug of tea to the side. The tea bag bobbed up and down as she pulled on the string. Rey opened and closed her mouth with a solid click as an almost hesitant grimace pulled on her face. It was the first time Finn had seen reluctance grace her sharp features since he walked into the café and it didn’t look good on her. But she pulled her hands from the sleeve of her sweater and clasped them over her laptop again, curling the fingers around the casing and picking at a peeling sticker.

“I feel like… it’s my responsibility to ask if you really want to continue with this interview,” she finally said, looking up at Poe with a steady gaze. “My agreement was with Finn and not with you. We can stop this right now. You can take my notes and I won’t put a word of this into the post. You don’t even have to finish your coffee with me.”

Poe studied her as he poured some milk into his mug and then sipped his coffee. His finger swirled around Finn’s knuckle once and then twice again as if sensing Finn’s relief. Rey was giving them an out and she knew it and Poe could take it if he wanted. Maybe if they left now it wouldn’t get any worse and they could go on pretending like the whole afternoon never happened. But that also meant pretending meeting Rey never happened and despite everything, Finn was almost sad to think of that possibility. He liked her. A lot. She was smart and sharp with a shadowed brightness that was like a meteor shower once she let it show.

But she also seemed… lonely. Finn wasn’t sure if that was the right word but he couldn’t think of anything better. He felt connected in a way. Like they’d stepped into a whole new chapter together without realizing it. He knew what it was like to be surrounded by the people he loved and still feel like he was standing on a deserted island sometimes. He knew Poe did too. It was something that’d drew them together. Together, they didn’t feel so alone.

And he was starting to feel that with Rey too.

If he knew Poe as well as he thought he did --- current circumstances aside--- then Finn knew that Poe would see that too.

“I have a better offer,” Poe said. “But you have to let me finish the story first and then you can hear it.”

“Are you sure?” Rey asked.

She was gracious enough to hide the flash excitement that crossed her face quickly. She bit her lip even though her hand reached for her pen like a reflex.

“Are you sure?” Rey asked again. “I know that seeing the blog post was upsetting---”

“It wasn’t the blog post,” Poe interrupted with a wave of his hand. “It wasn’t the post. Trust me, I lived it. I can’t forget it. The post wasn’t a problem.”

“Poe---” Finn tried because he saw him. He saw Poe pressed into the corner of his apartment, hyperventilating and sobbing until all of the fur on BB-8’s neck was wet. He saw the anguish and the terror and the---

“It was the photo,” Poe said.

Finn stopped.

The photo?

Rey blinked at Poe and tilted her head.

“You had a photo of me in the post notes.” Poe continued. “When I won my Pulitzer, they took a picture of me and it was on every local news site. It was the first picture to come up when you googled my name for a while. It’s how they recognized me. Then they took a photo and sent it to my boss. Then my face was being blasted on every news site nationwide for a whole other reason.”

The photo. It’d been the photo. Finn was so used to every line of Poe’s face he didn’t even think about the photo.

Something close to embarrassment colored Poe’s face as he squeezed Finn’s hand.

“You’d think I’d be used to it by now but…”

His voice broke off and he waved his hand again before taking another sip of his coffee.

“I’ll take the photo down,” Rey said softly.

Poe nodded and cleared his throat.

“So,” he said. “Do we have a deal?”

Rey checked a glance over at Finn before pulling her notepad in front of her again.

“It’s a deal.”

* * *

Holdo was Poe’s mandated therapist and Poe kind of hated her a little bit. She wouldn’t let things go even when Poe was desperate to change the subject and she’d meet his anger by calling his bluff every single time. For the longest time, Poe couldn’t even tell you what she was doing to actually help him. It was a waste of time in his opinion. But Leia refused to let him even into the office and he needed… he needed… after everything he needed his voice to be his own again.

Snap and Jess and Leia swore up and down that his reputation wasn’t in the gutter after all the vile things he published and even the most vocal of his normal critics were taking his side and going so far as to even tweet in his defense but… still. The posts were gone, wiped clean from the site and most of the internet, but the words were still burnt on the tips of his fingers. They still branded his voice whenever he tried to write anything.

And Holdo wasn’t helping. Most sessions, Poe left pissed off and stressed and vowing to never go back. He still returned because a part of him was desperate to not lose anything else. He couldn’t lose his words too. But it just wasn’t working.

It came to a head when Poe finally tried to give a little, hoping that that was what she wanted. If he sat in silence, she sat in silence. She never filled anything, she never prompted. It was infinitely frustration to be faced with someone who had the same stubborn resolve he had--- and he was never going to admit that out loud because Karé would cackle so loud the whole city would quake--- but he had to do _something._ Leia took Holdo’s word as law and until Holdo said so, Poe was stuck sitting and watching the news happen rather than being a part of it.

So, he drew the first blood and hoped that his spiral into an embarrassing confession that left him feeling raw and bruised would be enough. He could do that. He could give up a part of himself if that meant getting back into some sense of normalcy.

“I can’t sleep in my apartment,” he said one afternoon.

Holdo said nothing. Her face didn’t even twitch. She just stared at him and waited.

Poe huffed and he wished his arm wasn’t in a sling because his chest felt exposed and open.

“I’m scared of my apartment,” he tried again. “Because it gets too dark…I’ve resorted to sleeping with the lights on or well… trying at least… A-and…”

Poe clenched his jaw because the stuttering was still popping up and he hadn’t had a problem with that since his mother died when he was eight. The familiar angry heat climbed up his legs and rolled in his stomach.

“I’m a grown man who needs a nightlight and I hate it. The walls feel so close and nothing I do fixes that and I hate being in my apartment for even a minute but where am I supposed to go because I can’t go outside and I can’t expect my dad to stick around for the rest of my life. My s-skin feels like it’s crawling and I don’t understand why I can never get comfortable or why… why I feel like I’m trapped no matter what I do and this is the part _where you’re supposed to say something!”_

Holdo lifted a brow but again she said nothing.

Unbelievable!

“Am I talking to myself here? You’re supposed to help me get better. If you’re just going to waste my time then I’ll---”

“Go back to your apartment?” Holdo finally asked.

Poe stared at her, seething a little inside because he couldn’t tell if she was making fun of him or not.

“That’s the point we’re getting at, right? It’s your apartment but it’s no longer your home.” She toyed with a pen and continued to watch Poe. “Why don’t you move?”

Poe sputtered. “Why… why don’t I… I can’t!”

Holdo shrugged. “Why not?”

“Because---”

And Poe hated her because he didn’t have an answer for her and suddenly it was just so simple and maybe he hated himself a little too for getting so worked up because he could… He could move. It wasn’t like he was strapped for cash. He’d been smart with his investments. He worked too much to have ever taken a holiday. He didn't have a car. 

He could move if he wanted to.

“Poe,” Holdo said, leaning over with a small smile. “When people go through traumatic experiences, their entire world shifts beneath their feet. And you are doing everything to hold on because it’s what you think your view is now. But if you let go and you let yourself fall a little, nothing will ever be right side up like it was before, but you might just find that the ground gets under your feet again. If your apartment isn’t home anymore, then find a new one.”

Poe moved into a studio loft the next month where the windows were tall and the walls were only dividers and not actually closed off and it… was the closest he’d felt to home in a long time.

It helped… for a little while. He still had to sleep with a light on but at least he’d been able to work his way down to a small bulb that changed colors on the wall in the corner of his bedroom.

That was when he _did_ sleep.

But he was fine. He’d functioned on little sleep before so… he was good. For the most part, everything went back to normal.

Well… as normal as they could go when living the life as a subject of a pending investigation. Poe wasn’t allowed on assignment yet and he’d been stuck in the office working on pointless tasks to keep himself busy. Leia was pulling all her strings to keep Poe’s face off any friendly or rival press and he wasn’t allowed to open any of his mail anymore. They tried to hide it but he knew there’d been a bunch of meetings involving HR and lawyers and Leia where he was the topic of discussion.

But really it was fine.

…

The thing was, though, he was not fine. But he was really good at tricking people--- even himself--- into thinking he’s fine. He was doing a good job at it too.

Until the panic attacks started kicking in.

The first one happened in the blessing of his own apartment. A doordash driver came to the wrong address and had a rather over enthusiastic knock. No big deal. But other than the delivery driver, who witnessed a rather pale and stuttering, cranky Poe, no one was there to witness it. So, Poe was fine to keep that one to himself.

The second one was infinitely worse.

By then the bruises had started to fade and his arm was out of the sling and most of the time people stopped staring at him. He tried not to spend too much time outside while he was alone. Partially because it was the compromise he’d come to with Leia so that he didn’t have a company appointed bodyguard following him around every two seconds. Who knew that Resistance Publications made enough equity to afford an insurance plan that came with an optional bodyguard? And he definitely didn’t go out on his own when it was dark out for… reasons that Leia didn’t need to know about.

But for some reason, that afternoon, he’d felt too much like he was being watched and spent far too long twitching a glance over his shoulder than getting any work done. The walls were a little too close and Poe couldn’t shake this lingering smell he couldn’t place and he just needed some fresh air.

Besides, he was Dameron and if Damerons were good at anything it was making what was nothing into a competition. By the time he’d worked the courage up, he was already exiting the elevator and stalking towards the doors of the lobby. He didn’t have to go far. There was a coffee cart just on the corner. He could make it that far. Who cared if Holdo told him he should lay off the caffeine until he was able to sleep a full night without the nightmares? It would get him outside where he could breathe the fresh late fall air. It would get him talking to someone he didn’t know. He could do it. He could do it.

But when he opened the door and stepped outside, his chest constricted and he wouldn’t have been able to take a deep breath if he tried and his stomach was turning and like an idiot, he pushed himself to keep walking.

He could do it. He could do it.

He could do it.

He couldn’t do it. But he was going to make himself anyway.

Poe could see the cart from where he was. He could smell the strong wafts of over roasted coffee and hear the crunch of ice as someone ordered an ice latte. He clenched his hands into fists to keep them from trembling. It wasn’t working but he could pretend.

Just a little bit farther. He didn’t even have to order anything. He could make it to the cart and then turn right around. Yep, that’s what he’d do.

He was two steps away. The barista had made eye contact with him. If he reached out he could touch the cart. One step.

The tap on his shoulder was almost feather light but it felt like a lightning bolt down Poe’s spine.

He spun around with all the air in his lungs lodged in his throat, solid as a brick and blocking any oxygen from coming in or out. His raised fist sent the homeless man recoiling back.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you,” the man said. “It’s just you dropped this.”

And in his hand was Poe’s wallet.

Poe’s knees didn’t feel like they could hold up his body anymore. He couldn’t breathe.

“I didn’t steal anything,” the man said defensively when Poe was quiet too long. “You can count it.”

He couldn’t breathe… He couldn’t… He didn’t… Where was he?

Poe must have looked like an absolute maniac because the homeless man slipped from defensive to concerned.

“Hey,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Is everything okay?” Another voice asked from behind Poe, sending his muscles into convulsive shivers he couldn’t control.

“He dropped his wallet. Are you okay?”

But the voices were underwater and Poe was underwater and he couldn’t breathe and he was so cold and people kept coming up behind him and _he_ was definitely behind him and they were going to take Poe back and---

“I don’t think he’s breathing.”

Something touched his arm and then Poe must have blacked out because when he came to and the roaring of the blood in his ears had turned into a tolerable lull, he was pressed in the corner of the lobby bathroom with his shirt soaked in sweat and the taste of sickness coating his mouth.

Poe made a point to not tell anyone of that one either. He suspected Leia probably knew because she knew him better than he knew himself and when he’d asked to go home early that day she agreed a lot easier than he would’ve thought. But no one needed to know.

Well, that was a lie actually. Poe told his dad because hearing his voice was the only thing that seemed to make Poe feel even a little bit safe and like the ground beneath his feet wasn’t about to crumble. He didn’t tell him everything but he told him a little. It was enough. It had to be. Bringing himself to saying more would’ve been too much like digging his own grave.

The third one though, Poe couldn’t hide from anyone.

He’d been on edge all day and it felt like his hands had been shaking forever. He couldn’t remember a time when they were just still. The nightmares had been escalating more and more like a roller coaster that never seemed to crest at the top of the hill. He couldn’t keep anything down anymore which left him with just coffee and stress swilling in his stomach. He still wasn’t allowed on assignment even though he was _fine_ and he knew how to hide the terror that filled him every time he lost sight of his friends when they went out.

It’d been dark outside all day as a late season thunderstorm crashed across the sky and made his shoulder ache. He’d almost called out sick when he’d woken up and the darkness still lingered in the sky but he’d forced himself anyway because who cared what Holdo said about respecting self limits. But someone must have been in his office because he couldn’t find anything and an irreplaceable key witness had been murdered in solitary confinement and no one was digging and the rain always seemed to make the wifi slow and there had to have been a leak somewhere in the building because all he could hear was this damn clicking sound.

_Click click click click click._

He’d been a complete ass to everyone who came in contact with him and his foul mood threw a stench into the entire team. He snapped at Snap which, he never did. His argument with Karé had turned on the edge of being too vicious. Jess wouldn’t even discuss an assignment with him until his attitude ‘cheered the fuck up’. Leia had saved him from embarrassing himself with an arch of an eyebrow that worked every time to shut Poe up.

But then the power went out and Poe had been lost in the darkness of the grips of a venomous flashback that he couldn’t escape. Poe couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face but Hux’s dead lifeless body was as bright as if a spotlight was shining bright and warm. Everywhere he looked, Hux was there, staring at him with that expression of disgusted shock.

_Click._

_Click._

_Click._

Every click sent Poe’s entire body flinching until he was cowered in the corner of his office because his legs were too weak to carry him anywhere else and he’d buckled onto the floor. His fingers were latched tight in his hair and _pulling_ until his scalp burned and a small wet sound broke past his lips.

He couldn’t breathe but that was the least of his worries because he was back and he was going to die and Hux’s blood was on his hands because he was going to help Poe and that’s what got him killed and nothing could ever get rid of the deep _ache_ that settled into his bones and never really went away.

It took Leia’s gentle fingers through his hair and the crashing sounds of the body wrecking sobs that were ripping out of him and tearing parts of his soul for him to finally realize that the unsettling feeling he’d been carrying for weeks was the feeling of his whole self drifting away. He couldn’t breathe because he was dying. He was shutting down and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Even the warmth of Leia’s protection couldn’t save him. He didn’t feel like his life was his own anymore. He didn’t fit like he used to. Even when he stopped and his tears had dried, he didn’t get better. He just turned numb. It was no better than the numbness from before. He might as well have stayed in the basement because there was no getting better. Not for him.

His blood rang through his veins like a fading fluorescent light. He felt like his entire being was just buzzing so softly, barely existing anymore.

“What exactly are you afraid of Poe?” Holdo had asked gently or at least a lot gentler than he’d ever heard her.

He couldn’t bring himself to answer her though. He was so lost, he didn’t know how to use words anymore.

“Are you afraid,” Holdo pressed. “That the man who shot at you with the empty gun is going to come back for you?”

_Because he was still out there and despite all of Zorii’s efforts they were no closer to finding him._

She didn’t need to say it and Poe couldn’t because the thought of actually admitting it out loud was like swallowing glass.

“There’s a saying in my profession about panic attacks: Approach, don’t avoid---” 

“Sounds like a load of bullshit someone would say when they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about,” Poe said, surprising even himself with how sharp his voice sounded.

It was a poor bark to his usual comeback but it was meant to lash.

It was meant to hurt… Poe didn’t like that hotness settling into his chest. He would’ve apologized but…But Holdo, collected, unflappable, Holdo, smiled at him. It was small but there was a kind of victory in the way her gaze held his. It took everything in him not to break first.

“Poe,” Holdo said as she crossed her legs and leaned forward in her chair. “I am the last one who needs to tell you that what you went though was one of the worst things a person could endure. You were taken from some place you felt safe and brutally beaten and threatened for days. You were left with the face of a man who tried to help you in a dark cellar with only the smell of your own blood and urine to the mask the decomposition. But more significantly you were forced to betray every moral and virtue that you hold dear. They forced you to turn on yourself. They forced you to plant seeds of hate and bigotry in an open wound for everyone to see. And… they are continuing to force you to survive in a world where you don’t feel safe anymore.”

Poe clenched his jaw so hard, his teeth ached. He was so sick of crying. He was so sick of feeling weak. He was so sick of feeling nothing at all.

A tear escaped anyway because even now he had no control over his own emotions.

“But despite everything,” Holdo continued. “Despite everything they did, every humiliation, every crack, they didn’t defeat you. You survived and you continue to survive in defiance with what they tried to do. There is still a spark of hope in you.”

“Then why do I feel so alone?” And that tingling that crawled under his skin felt so close to burning out. He felt raw and vulnerable and so, so small.

Holdo considered him for a moment.

“Because you are, Poe.”

The air rushed out of Poe’s lungs until they burned like it was the first exhale he’d had in a while. A ruptured gasp stuttered from his tight chest as he realized that she was right. His friends and family were there, surrounding him and catching him as he wobbled but he was in the center of it all; alone. He used to thrive off everyone else but that left him open enough to be stung and now he was stuck carrying his hurt close to his body and unable to drop it in case it shattered. Suddenly, he was overwhelmed with a wash of grief that left him cold and wet and he couldn’t remember what it was like to feel the sun on his skin anymore.

“But you don’t have to be,” Holdo said after Poe’s break down. “Fractured doesn’t mean broken.”

Poe’s voice was thick when he spoke again. “They didn’t break me.”

“No, they didn’t.” And if Poe wasn’t mistaken he could almost say that there was something proud in Holdo’s gaze as she leaned back into her chair. She waited for Poe to quietly pull himself together before she tapped her pen against her notes once.

“There’s one last thing I wanted to discuss with you before our time is up,” she said and Poe wasn’t sure he had enough in him to handle anything else but he listened.

“Have you ever heard of Bodyguard Buddies?” She asked. “It’s a program for people with your similar obstacles. Children who suffered abuse early on, prisoners of war, refugees, victims of crimes of similar nature.”

Poe frowned. “This isn’t like one of those cheesy biker gangs that come to trials and hang outside your house, is it?”

“No.” Holdo laughed. “They’re dogs.”

“Dogs?”

She nodded. “Service dogs. They’re specifically trained to handle PTSD clients. They can do all kinds of skills and tasks to assist you so you can continue to live a healthy successful life.”

Poe still didn’t see where she was going with this and his skepticism wasn’t hard to see on his face.

“They can do something called deep pressure therapy where they can ground you during a panic attack or wake you during a nightmare. They can alert you to oncoming triggers. Things like thunderstorms or men in uniform or even act as a buffer so people won’t come up from behind you and surprise you.” Holdo gave him another knowing look because even though Poe refused to admit that people coming up behind him bothered him, he still couldn’t deny the way his heart would race every time he felt like he had to look over his shoulder.

“You think I should get a dog?” Poe asked.

“A trained service dog might help you adjust to life again, yes. Several of their clients who also deal with feelings of loneliness also find the companionship beneficial. I have a friend who owes me a favor. I can get you into the program a little faster than the average wait time.” Holdo handed Poe over a pamphlet and then stood. “Now, you don’t have to say yes. That was a lot to process. But it’s an option we could explore if you want. I’ll see you in a couple days.”

* * *

Knowing that he was being talked about, BB-8 propped his head back onto Poe’s leg and licked Poe’s hand.

“So,” Rey said with a smile. “Can I ask about his name?”

“Oh!” Poe exclaimed, giving BB-8 a good scratch. “He was puppy number eight of the litter. They called him baby eight and it sort of stuck.”

“Baby, BeeBee,” Finn added, weighing his hands in the air as Poe ignored them for a moment to give BB-8 a couple dozen of kisses on his head. He propped his forehead against BB-8’s and the boxer respond with several kisses of his own. “They’ll be just a minute.”

Rey’s nose wrinkled as she bit back a laugh.

And for a moment it was nice. For a moment anyone looking over would’ve seen three people drinking coffee and laughing at one another with a big slobbering dog licking his way into getting a treat. No one would’ve guessed that the past was fileted on the table in front of them, trapped on the pages of Rey’s notebook. Finn held onto the moment as tightly as he could. Most of the time it’s easy. When you’re a cop, it’s easy to get bogged down by what you see until you turn so jaded you sink in the misery. He didn’t believe in drowning though. Poe taught him that. He’d been on the job a little less than a year when he stumbled across that basement window that night. He saw the worst of people sometimes. It was rare to find people who actually cared about other people with their whole being. Poe was one of the lucky few who had so many surrounding him and now Finn was lucky too because he had Poe. Poe caught him every time he needed a catch. Every time. On nights when it seemed like everyone in the city was fighting with one another or on nights when he had to discharge his weapon or on nights when everyone, even the ones he was trying to help, didn’t even bother to hide their absolute loathing of him and Rose and what their uniforms stood for; Every time, Poe caught him.

It’s why he’d jumped at the chance to try and _fix_ this thing with Rey’s post.

So, to be honest, he’d been expecting the kind of same resentment to bubble up again deep inside his chest when he first stepped through the café. But Rey surprised him. She was one of the rare few.

It was Rey that broke the moment. She glanced at the time on her cracked cellphone and let out an almost sad sigh before slumping in her seat.

“So,” she said. “I guess we’ve reached the end.”

Poe hummed while he gave BB-8 one more, easy pet. Rey fiddled with her notepad, running her fingers over the indents her pen had left, before she flipped the pad over to Finn.

“I won’t take the post down,” she said to both of them with a resolute clench of her jaw. “But I won’t post this either.”

Finn glanced over to Poe who gave him an unworried shrug. Finn took the notepad. Heat pooled in his ears as the paper wrinkled beneath his hand. Now that he knew it hadn’t been the blog post at all, he felt a little silly about the whole thing. But Poe wasn’t mad at him anymore which, was all he cared about and Rey had already said she would take down the photo. 

“Don’t you want to hear about the deal?” Poe asked a little too smoothly for Finn not to notice.

Poe was smooth but he was charming by nature. When he tried was when Finn knew Poe was always up to something.

Rey smiled again as she shook her head.

“No deals,” she said. “Thank you for sharing your story with me. And thank you for continuing to write. Your story on service dogs and ADA violations was beyond incredible.”

Finn beamed at him as Poe ducked his head a little.

“Seriously, I don’t even know how many of my readers tweeted me that article and that was even before the post. You have no idea how many survivors you inspired from that article alone.”

Okay, now, Poe was blushing even though he took the praise with grace. He cleared his throat and hid behind his coffee but Finn could see how pleased he was all the same.

“It made my sergeant cry,” Finn added. “I didn’t even think that woman had tear ducts.”

“Oh my God! And that part about---"

“All right all right, stop it!” Poe waved them off. “They already gave me the Pulitzer.”

Finn groaned as he relaxed back with his arm across the back of Poe’s chair and shared an exasperated roll of his eyes to Rey.

“Besides,” Poe added. “I still want to offer my end of the bargain.”

“Oh,” Rey said. “You don’t---”

“You want a job?”

Rey froze in her seat with her eyes wide and her mouth open. Poe watched her as she tried to process what he just offered and even Finn couldn’t have predicted that, that was what Poe had decided to bring to the table. But it made sense. Rey was a talented writer. Talented wasn’t even the right word. She was a vibrant writing. Her words were like the stars in the sky. You couldn’t help but stop and look at them.

Rey’s nose wrinkled again and she narrowed her eyes at Poe.

“Are you kidding?” She asked, suspicious again. “Are you joking with me?”

Poe, unfazed and probably being flippant on purpose shrugged again.

“My boss and I liked you work. The Resistance has been looking for a crime journalist for a while now.”

Rey’s gaze lasered in on Finn. “Did you know about this? Is this a test?”

Finn held up his hands. “I came in here planning on threatening to arrest you if you didn’t take down the post. I don’t know anything about this.”

Poe swung his head until he could level a glare at Finn. “Really?”

“I wasn’t actually going to arrest her---”

“That doesn’t mean you can do it every time someone---”

“Says the man who threatened to expose Panera Bread when they ran out of bread---”

“I was hangry and you know it and how does Panera run out of bread? It is in the name---”

“Hangry Poe sounds a little hypocritical if you ask---”

“Sorry!” Rey interrupted. Her hands flipped in the air a little like she was suffering a small glitch before she leaned across the table. “Are you shitting me? You’re really offering me a job?”

Poe nodded. “It’s yours if you want it.”

“With Leia Organa? A job with Leia Organa?”

“Well, yeah she’ll be there,” Poe said. “I will be too…”

But Rey’s eyes had gone wide as she started to grin.

“Yeah, I don’t think she cares about you being there,” Finn said before Poe’s hand hit him in the back of his thigh.

They watched as Rey had a little freak out to herself, bouncing slightly in her seat as she tapped her pen. It was just starting to get to the point of it being a little awkward before she zeroed in on them again.

“Counter offer,” she said. “I accept but… only if you two tell me how you met. Later that is.”

Poe tilted his head in confusion.

“Finn wasn’t in any of the stories after. So, I can only assume you two didn’t connect until later.”

Finn stretched forward and leaned against the table. “Don’t worry, buddy. I got this. It started when I swept him off his feet---”

“You mean when you knocked me over---”

“I swept him off his feet---”

* * *

Finn cursed as another cantaloupe rolled from underneath the one he’d been trying to grab. He reached for the runaway fruit on instinct just as another one fell to the floor with a squelch. The momentum of his body sent him tumbling to the side as he clipped someone’s hip and something by his ankles moved and by that point it was a lost cause because suddenly two bodies and at least four cantaloupes were spilling onto the floor.

To be fair, he knew better than to try and go grocery shop after a shift. Napping should always come before shopping. But he’d been a little antisocial and he wanted to get his errands done as quickly as possible and _oh right you just crushed somebody._

Suddenly, an orange and white boxer with a Velcro vest and patches that clearly read ‘SERVICE ANIMAL: PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’ was pushing itself between him and whoever the innocent bystander to the fruit massacre had been and Finn was totally going to end up on YouTube: Uniformed police officer attacks civilian and service dog with melons.

Finn could practically hear Rose laughing now.

“I am so sorry!” Finn said even though he couldn’t see past the boxer. “Oh my God. I’m so so sorry. Are you hurt?”

But then someone was laughing and that someone was the someone Finn had almost buried in cantaloupe.

“I’m okay, BB-8,” the voice said, rubbing at the dog’s ears before pushing himself up from the ground.

“Well,” the man said. “On the list of things I had happening today, projectile sweet melons didn’t even make it and hey---”

With the dog thoroughly out of the way, Finn was struck by two things. One: his would be innocent bystander was _stunning_ in the ‘smile that was like the sun’ kind of way especially without being almost pummeled to death which lead to two: Finn knew those brown eyes.

“Hey,” Poe Dameron said again with a stunned kind of smile on his face.

“It’s you!” Finn blurted out.

“Oh buddy!”

And Finn wasn’t really sure which one of them initiated it but suddenly they were both embracing each other hard and Finn was definitely kneeling in cantaloupe guts and Poe was still tangled up in his dog’s leash but they didn’t let go. He hadn’t been able to really follow up that night with Poe. He’d been caught up in the adrenaline of helping Rose detain the elderly homeowner turned suspect and clearing the house as screaming sirens came racing down the street after he’d called for backup.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Finn remembered saying, kicking out the window so that he could get down to the basement in case anyone came rushing down the steps to finish the job. The next thing he knew, Poe was being whisked away in an ambulance and he and Rose were reporting back to the station to debrief with the kind of intimidating detective with the permanent racoon eyes and wild curly hair that had been handling the case.

Life went on and Rose and Finn were sent back out as the beat cops they were and even as two years passed Finn couldn’t help but think about those brown eyes catching in his flashlight’s beam when the nights in the squad car turned quiet as the city finally slept.

“Poe. Poe Dameron,” Finn heard himself saying as if pulling on a familiar jacket. “It’s really you!”

Poe smiled that stunning smile again as he sat back, his hand still firm and steady on Finn’s shoulder.

“Yeah, buddy,” Poe said. “It’s really me.”


End file.
